After Hours with Uber

Uber, the taxi hailing app that has caused quite a conversation lately, visited us for After Office Hours last week.

The team was a group of program managers who are traveling to different countries that Uber is operating in, in an effort to learn more about the city specifics and operations.

It was an interesting discussion between the team and audience members that covered areas such as design, innovation and challenges faced by Uber.

Uber has had its fair share of challenges, something that the audience did not shy away from asking about. Of great interest was the question about how Uber handles competition and government restrictions.

We learnt that Uber is indeed facing great competition the world over, from local services to infrastructure created by governments. One way they face the competition is by focusing on creating value for consumers, by learning what specific markets need, and are missing.

There was a spirited conversation around this issue, with a representative of a local startup asking Uber to clarify whether smaller companies should be afraid of the rapidly expanding outfit.

“There are too many problems for Uber to create solutions for,” said Rafi, explaining that they coexist with various competitions, such as Ola in India.

There were other great takeaways for both sides, such as learning that Uber tries to create startup environment for its teams, so that each team is empowered to set and achieve its own goals, without a restrictive top down management system.

This is a brief recap of our #AOH last week , and we hope that both the audience and the Uber team left having learnt from one another.

Did you follow the conversation on Twitter?

Check it out on #AOH and #UberInKenya, and we’ll see you next time!